Keep Growing Quietly

An old man was watching me work on my scarf as we sat side by side in a waiting room this morning.

“When I was a little boy in Denmark,” he said, “I used to hold out my hands for my mother and help her untangle the yarn.” I love when strangers offer sweet fragments of memory like that.

The scarf am knitting, by the way, is a mess, but I’ve decided that random and quirky is its style, and I love those colors: bright reds, magenta, threads of purple. It’s been slow going, but it’s gradually taking on length. Maybe someday I’ll finish it. Maybe by then I’ll be a woman who can wear it with panache.

The best part of my day was a bike ride, just me and my trusty Mantis, doing the Ballard Canyon loop. A few other cyclists went by in groups, wearing lycra shorts and loud jerseys and intense, not-fun expressions on their faces. I much prefer my solo ambling. There’s a section where you crest a hill and coast for a while past vineyards and meadows, smelling cut grass and fresh air, and I was thinking as I pedaled along how easy it is to be happy sometimes. Tunes help.

I’d been feeling insecure about my writing (although I guess that comes with the territory) and playing with the idea of submitting an essay to a journal of some sort but didn’t think I had anything worthy. I even started reading things out loud to Monte, only to discover with one piece in particular that while I very much needed to write it, no one…absolutely no one…should have to read it. And although I’ve been at peace lately with who I am and what I’m not, I was starting to fish around for reassurance and validation from others. But then I read these words from Rilke, like a personal message, almost…exactly right:

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”